Re: visual-line-mode and line wrapping

From:

Miles Bader

Subject:

Re: visual-line-mode and line wrapping

Date:

Tue, 25 May 2010 16:37:18 +0900

Stefan Monnier <address@hidden> writes:
>> In the discussion of the trashbin feature, visual-line-mode came up.
>> It seems many of us would like it to be able to wrap lines at
>> a position other than the window edge.
>
> I still haven't heard any good argument for it, as compared to using
> wide fringes, wide margins, or by splitting windows.
>
> I do think it could make sense in one case: when you want the
> wrap-width to be larger than the window-width. But AFAICT nobody has
> asked for that yet.
I thought I've said such in the past, but in case not:
One problem with the "fringe/margin approach" is that it always exactly
tracks physical window size, which is sometimes annoying. For instance,
it would be nice to have word-wrapping that wraps to 80 or 72 columns
without having to result to multiple word-wrapping mechanisms (e.g., the
old lisp-based modes).
Also, it would be nice if one could bound the width used for wrapping so
that when a window becomes wider than a certain size, the wrapping width
would stick at some maximum -- this is because extremely wide paragraphs
can be hard to read. Similarly, when windows become narrow than some
width, it would be nice if wrapping actually respected some _minimum_
width, so that you don't end up with the text in a single narrow
vertical line (the text is probably unreadable either way, but at least
with the bounded-width version, you can get a more sensible idea of the
document structure).
[Not commenting on the technical difficulty of doing these, just saying
there are reasonable use-cases.]
-Miles
--
Bacchus, n. A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for
getting drunk.